Damien Cave reports:

Flying into Sydney usually brings stunning views of rocky cliffs and crystal waters, but when Anna Funder looked out the window before landing this week, she saw only tragedy.

Thick gray smoke blanketed the skyline and the coast, stretching for miles from the fire front at the southwestern edge of the city, where dried-out forests have been burning for weeks.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Ms. Funder, an award-winning Australian novelist known for stories of cruelty and resistance. “It was this huge and terrible seam of white smoke coming up from the ground beyond which the rest of the continent — where I was headed, where my home is — was invisible.

“It was as if the country were being devoured by a chemical reaction.”

Sydney, nicknamed the “Emerald City” for its subtropical beauty, is struggling with a summer of choking smoke. Bush fires raging to the north, south and west since early November have pushed smoke and ash not just into neighborhoods abutting the blazes, but all the way to coastal suburbs more than 50 miles away.

All of us who live here can taste the fire and feel it in our throats. Asthmatics are showing up in emergency rooms in greater numbers. Schools are canceling sports and recess. In houses built to be open to the elements, people are taping their windows shut; there have even been reports of fire alarms in office buildings set off by the smoke from miles away. [Continue reading…]